GOP looks at big cuts for Labor, Education, HHS

House Republicans late Thursday began circulating new spending targets for appropriations bills for the coming year with Labor, Education and Health and Human Services facing a nearly 20 percent reduction on top of the cuts already made in the March 1 sequestration order.

Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) appears to be backloading the larger reductions in order to salvage a few of the 12 annual bills this summer.

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He is putting a priority on what he sees as security items, including law enforcement and homeland security as well as the military. But the numbers are a prescription for more stalemate unless the House and Senate leadership begin to get more serious about budget negotiations with one another and President Barack Obama.

Pentagon spending would rise to $512.5 billion, a roughly 6 percent increase over the reduced levels allowed under sequestration. But elsewhere, the landscape is bleak for most core domestic priorities for Democrats and the president.

Discretionary spending for the departments of Labor, Education and Health and Human Services would be capped at $121.8 billion — or about $28 billion below the best available estimates for post-sequestration appropriations.

Stepping back just a few years, that would be $42 billion — or 26 percent below what was enacted in fiscal 2010, the last year that Democrats and Obama controlled the appropriations process.

Agriculture, Justice, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs fare better by comparison, and Rogers’s goal is to try to make some progress here and hope for the best down the road.

“This is clearly an austere budget year — sequestration has taken a huge toll on discretionary spending,” he said in a short statement. “This is the hand that sequestration has dealt us, and we have no choice but to try and make the best of what we have. It is my sincere hope that the House and Senate can come together on a sustainable budget compromise to replace sequestration and establish a responsible, single House and Senate top-line discretionary budget number.”

Left unsaid by Rogers is the fact that the House Republican budget compounded his problems by demanding more domestic cuts than envisioned in the 2011 Budget Control Act in order to offset the greater defense spending that Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) promised party hawks to get their votes this spring.

Transportation, housing, environmental and natural resources programs stand out as other targets for significant cuts.

For example, an estimated $44.1 billion is allocated for the bill funding the departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development. That compares with roughly $48.5 billion after sequestration in March — a 9 percent drop that will affect the same Federal Aviation Administration functions that triggered the controversial furloughs of air traffic controllers earlier this spring.

Just months ago, before sequestration, the same agencies were operating at a level near $51.8 billion under the continuing resolution, and in 2010, the same bill represented $67.9 billion in discretionary budget authority.

It is difficult to be certain at this stage, but Rogers’s allocations suggest, too, that he is not leaving room for reforms sought by Obama, moving the Food for Peace program from the agriculture bill to one funding the State Department and foreign assistance.

Agriculture is being promised about $19.5 billion, which is close to its post-sequester level counting the food aid. By comparison, state and foreign aid would be cut further to $34.1 billion, or about 15 percent below the post sequester funding.